Name: Rhubarb Pie
Ingredients: 4 pounds rhubarb; good suet crust; lemon peel; 1 cup water

Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

4 pounds rhubarb
good suet crust
lemon peel
1 cup water

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Strip the skin from the rhubarb, reducing the weight to about 3.5 pounds, and cut into 1‑inch pieces. If thick, split the sticks lengthwise.
Line a pie dish with suet crust and place a small cup in the center.

Assemble and bake

Add the rhubarb pieces and scatter a few pieces of lemon peel on top.
Cover with more suet crust and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together546 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb: Forms the tart filling and provides the main flavor and moisture of the pie.
Suet crust: Forms the structure that encloses the filling and browns as the pie bakes.
Lemon peel: Adds aromatic oils that brighten the sharp flavor of the rhubarb.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.